Think of Me
by TheNoodleIncident
Summary: [Post Jurassic World] Introspection. Owen and Claire each come to terms with their new, unexpected relationship. Heavily implied OwenxClaire. Rated for implied naughty funtimes and Owen's perpetual pottymouth. Companion fic to Second First Date.
1. Owen

_A/N: I just can't stop! What can I say, I love it when the rough-and-tumble guy gets the prim-and-proper girl. This is so much sugary fluff that you could probably use it to make marshmallows, and a lot of introspection on Owen's part. Rated for semi-sexual themes and language; in my head Owen's inner monologue is a total pottymouth. Disclaimer: I don't own Jurassic World, I just have a ClairexOwen obsession. Partially inspired by the song Bewitched. I also don't own the rights to the song, but I love Sinatra._

* * *

 _Bewitched_

Owen sat by himself at the bar, listening to the rain pour outside the propped-open door. He swirled his glass of whiskey and took a long sip. If he'd still been a smoker her would have lit up a cigarette, but he had given up smoking during his time in the Navy. Good smokes were about as hard to come by as good alcohol was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, especially in the middle of the freakin' ocean, so he'd quit cold turkey. It had been the most excruciating four months of his life, until the nicotine fits finally wore off. Since then he'd only slipped up once, and he was considering bumming a smoke from the guy down the bar and slipping up again, if only said guy wasn't smoking the cheapest Camels money could buy. Even Owen Grady had standards.

Not that he ever held himself to his standards in any way that mattered. Owen took another long sip and placed the empty glass on the bar. The bartender turned around from reorganizing his stock of vodka.

"'Nother one, Owen?" He asked, leaning on the bar.

"Make it a double this time."

"Man, if you're drinking to forget, you know you gotta pay up front," the bartender japed, picking up a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and pouring Owen's drink. Owen smiled half-heartedly.

"It's not like that, Mike. There's this girl…" Owen and Mike had known each other before Owen's Navy days. Back when he was younger, he'd haunted this bar, back before he went to Tunisia and Portugal and half the damn globe, and before he'd left to live on Isla Nublar. Back when there were still stories of Isla Sorna to be told that no one had heard yet; back when a dinosaur theme park with actual live dinosaurs was the fevered dream of the madman. The stories of the original park on Isla Nublar had since died down, and new stories had arisen thanks to the extensive media coverage and the class-action lawsuits, along with the government inquest. The news was turned to coverage of the latest media circus that was one of the Congressional hearings on Jurassic World, and Owen did his best not to pay it any attention. It helped that the volume was set on mute and Mike didn't let anyone bother him about having worked for InGen. He was just a behavioral researcher, and he had just been doing his job.

Mike's guffaw brought Owen back to reality. "You? Woman problems? What'd she do, laugh at your dick?" Mike laughed heartily. Owen's glare made his throw his hands up defensively.

In fact, the girl in question hadn't laughed at it at all. She'd _screamed_ because of it and damn near woke every neighbor in the vicinity. But that wasn't his problem. No one knew Owen Grady as a one-woman man. He'd once shown up at this very bar for a week straight with a different woman on his arm each night. Seven women in seven days, or had it been more than that?

Anyway, Long-term relationships weren't his thing. Owen Grady lived for the here and now, moment by moment, and sometimes moment by moment meant taking two girls at once back to his apartment. The Navy may have cured him of what could have become rampant alcoholism and his dependence on nicotine to stay calm, but there was only so much basic training could do to rid him of his playboy mentality. Even on Isla Nublar he'd gained a reputation among the staff, male and female alike, for being a womanizer. He'd propositioned most and _been_ propositioned by some, and he was hard pressed to think of a single hotdog stand or attraction in the park where he _hadn't_ had sex with someone.

"Nah, this one's different." Owen took a long gulp of his whiskey, draining almost all of the alcohol before he set the glass back on the bar. "Can I bum a smoke?" Mike pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and passed one to Owen, along with his lighter.

"Man, I haven't seen you this torn up since that stripper. What was her name? Ginger, Sparkle…" Mike laughed.

"Candy," Owen finished as he lit the cigarette, grinning ruefully. "I haven't fallen off the wagon like this in three years." He took a long drag on the cigarette and passed the lighter back to Mike. "With the smokes, I mean." He rattled the ice in his glass. "'Nother double. Come _on,_ man, I'm dry over here." Mike laughed and poured Owen another drink.

"So what's this girl done that's got you in such a panic?" Owen knocked the ashes off the tip of his cigarette into an ash tray Mike had pulled out from beneath the bar. He took another drag and stared thoughtfully up at the TV. There, on the screen, was Claire Dearing, the woman responsible for his current state, pushing her way through a crowd of reporters demanding comments on the hearing. She climbed into a taxi without a word and the camera panned after it as it sped off, no doubt headed back to her apartment. Owen hoped his space-out had gone unnoticed, but when he looked back down at Mike, the bartender was waggling his eyebrows at him, a stupid smile plastered on his face.

"What're you smiling about?" Owen _did_ drain the entire glass in one gulp this time.

"That's her, isn't it?" He grinned, reaching over to pat Owen on the shoulder when he didn't answer right away. "Man, she's gorgeous."

"You don't know the half of it." Owen shook his glass again and Mike put the bottle of whiskey on the bar.

"Pour yourself. Not like you haven't drunk a quarter of the bottle already. Damn, man, if _that's_ the girl you're worked up about, I see your problem." Owen's head snapped up as he stubbed the tail end of his cigarette out in the ash tray. The look in his eyes was absolutely dangerous.

"What do you mean?" Mike threw his hands up defensively for the second time that hour.

"I mean, she's a _bombshell._ Where'd you ever get involved with a classy lady like _her?_ " Owen huffed and poured himself another drink.

"I worked with her." He slammed back what was probably his fifth or sixth glass of whiskey; he'd lost count at that point. "On Isla Nublar." He felt everything in the bar come to a grinding halt, and there were whispers from the patrons at the other end of the bar. Mike quickly sent them down another round of beers and pulled up the barstool he kept behind the bar for himself. He poured himself a single from the same bottle Owen was in the process of killing.

"And?" He took a small sip. Mike technically owned the bar now, it was his prerogative if he wanted to drink his own stock.

"And? And what? What do you want me to say?"

" _And_ why is she so different from the others?"

It was a question Owen had no trouble answering, usually. Claire was intelligent and worldly and beautiful. She was tough as nails, she ran in heels, she handled a shotgun like no woman he'd ever seen. She wasn't afraid of the dinosaurs that now ran rampant in the park she used to manage. She hadn't been afraid—not that she'd shown, anyway—when she led the T-rex to fight that mutant dino-monster with only a road flare to protect herself.

She was also incredibly vulnerable right now. Claire had received summons after summons for inquest after hearing after inquest. It had taken a month before he could see her again and take her out to dinner, and that night he'd shown her exactly how she made him feel. At first, he thought Claire was going to be okay, that she'd trudge her way through the inquests, but she was cracking. It had been three months since that second first date, four since everything on Isla Nublar had gone to absolute shit. Claire had gotten mired up in the class action suit filed by the families of the victims of the dinosaur attacks, and even when she wasn't required to give testimony, she followed the case in the news. Photos of mutilated corpses made their way to her mailbox by way of disgruntled ex-employees and angry family members who thought all InGen and Masrani Global personnel, including her, needed to be put on trial for murder. He'd fought and fought for her to get a PO box for her mail, and finally she'd complied. He had the key, and once a week he picked up Claire's mail for her, throwing out anything with a handwritten address that wasn't from her sister or her nephews. His heart had skipped a few beats when the pickup included her Victoria's Secret catalogue one day, and he went through and circled pieces of particular interest before giving it to her that night. She had gotten a good laugh and he'd gotten laid, so it had all worked out. He smiled to himself at that particular memory, heat rising in his stomach.

"She saved my life, man," Owen finally said after a long pause. "Some sort of t-rex-pteradactyl hybrid got loose, and it was trying to eat off my face. Claire shot it. She didn't run, _she shot it_ , and _she saved my life._ " Owen was decently drunk now, and the memory of that day on Isla Nublar almost stung. Claire had saved his life, and he'd never forget it. He used it multiple times as justification to take her out for dinner at fancy restaurants and buy her expensive presents. He had almost beamed with pride when he caught a glimpse of a necklace he'd given her flashing around her throat as she got in her taxi on TV moments ago. He'd gotten a job as a behavioral researcher working with boring old _regular reptiles,_ anyway, so he could afford to spoil his new girlfriend. His girlfriend…the very idea sent a shiver down Owen's spine, and the heat in the pit of his stomach intensified. He'd never thought of himself as a man to have a steady girlfriend, but for the last four months he'd only had eyes for Claire. Not that he totally failed to notice other women, mind you, but they just couldn't hold a candle to her beauty, her charm, her wit. He'd deleted at least a hundred phone numbers that he saved primarily for booty calls, and had _reeeally_ offended a few more when he replied to text messages with "who is this and how did you get this number?"

"So what's the problem?"

What was the problem? The problem was that Claire deserved _so much more_ than an ex-military former man-whore like himself. She needed an intellectual equal who could debate with her. Not that he couldn't debate with her, but they usually debated about what they were going to watch on Netflix or who was going to buy the last round of shots before they went back to one or another's apartment. She was no match for him in the field of animal behavioral sciences, he knew, just as he was no match for her in terms of business management. She was entirely too good for him, but she texted him every night that they didn't spend together until she fell asleep and texted him as soon as she woke up to get ready for work at her new job on the board of directors for some massive multi-million-dollar investment firm or other; he was honestly embarrassed that he couldn't recall which one. She continued to go out with him on dates and for drinks, and she'd even gone clubbing at his insistence and he found out just how well she could dance. She needed someone just as passionate as she was, and he didn't fit the bill.

"She's entirely too good for me. You said it yourself. What's a woman like _that_ doing with a man like _me?_ " Owen put his head down on the bar and his phone buzzed in his vest pocket. He pulled it out quickly, unsurprised that it was a text message from Claire. He was honestly surprised it had taken her _this_ long to respond.

 _At your place? I had a really bad day. Wanna snuggle and watch a movie or three._

Owen texted her back and put the phone on the bar.

"That from her?" Mike asked knowingly. Owen nodded, and Mike took the bottle of whiskey and dropped a pile of cracker packets in front of Owen. "Chances are she's wondering what a guy like you sees in a girl like her." Owen fumbled with one of the cracker packets, wondering where the bartender had finally pulled _that_ bit of wisdom from.

"She's beautiful, and smart, and _passionate_ , and incredible." He tore open the crackers and ate them. "She needs someone who will settle down with her, not a lowlife womanizer like me." Mike slapped a hand on the bar, gaining Owen's attention.

"Dude, regardless of what she sees in you, _she keeps coming back._ And it sounds like she's trying to call you." Owen's phone was skittering across the bar, Claire's beaming face smiling from her caller ID picture. "Get your ass out of here and get back to your woman, Grady." Owen nodded and smiled, answering his phone and settling up his tab.

"Yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes. Yeah, just having a drink or two…no, not driving, don't have a car, 'member? Okay…see you in a few." He stepped away from the bar, smiling like a madman. "…I love you too."

 _I love you._ He hung up the phone, her words swirling around his head. He felt like he was floating. _I love you, I love you, I love you._ He turned back to Mike, grinning like an idiot.

I love you.

 _I_ love you.

I _love_ you.

I love _you._

"She said she loves me."

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 _Hope you enjoyed! Reviews are like cookies, I only don't like them if they have raisins.  
_


	2. Claire

_A/N: Hi everybody! Sorry it took me so long to get this one uploaded, work got in the way. Originally this was to be a standalone piece from the Owen chapter, but I decided to combine them since it's the same situation from two points of view. Claire's introspection is a lot different from Owen's because she's dealing with more than just romance, but in all I really like the way this one turned out. I'm thinking of making this one a three-parter. Or more. Drop me a review and let me know if you liked it!_

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Claire pushed through the crowd of reporters and screaming civilians, trying not to flinch as camera bulbs flashed in her face. Cameras and microphones were shoved in her path, and a few more daring reporters stepped in her path in vain attempts to get their questions answered.

"Claire, any comment on the proceedings?"

"What do you have to say to the families of the victims?"

" _What about the children that died?_ "

That question in particular haunted Claire for _weeks_. She didn't know how many people had died as a result of the Indominus Rex's escape. She wasn't even aware her own assistant, Zara, had died until Zach told her that Zara had been eaten by a pterodactyl…that was promptly eaten by the park's resident mosasaurus. She had lost sleep over the staggering loss of life as park guests continued to go unaccounted for, and more and more that had been recorded entering the park that day were listed as missing. Efforts to recover the bodies of the dead or search for the missing were hindered by the free-roaming dinosaurs all over the island. Masrani Global would never recoup the millions and millions of dollars in losses and would never get past the negative press, and they knew it. Every Masrani Global employee, including Claire, had been given a hefty severance package, but it couldn't ease Claire's conscience. The company was being quietly and discreetly dissolved, but that didn't help her sleep any easier.

As the park operations manager, many felt Claire was directly responsible for the events of that awful day. Why hadn't the risks associated with a genetically modified dinosaur been considered? What in God's green Earth made them think a dinosaur like that would be anything but a major liability?

They had considered the risks. They had considered the risks extensively. There had been meeting after meeting after meeting about the risks. Operators like herself wanted to know. Park employees that were to be assigned to the paddock wanted to know. _Investors_ wanted to know. But the Indominus had presented challenges that had _never_ been considered in board meetings, and if someone had said that the creature the lab technicians had dreamed up could _rip out its own tracking chip because it remembered where they put it,_ that person would have been laughed out of the room. Your average raptor had a brain the size of a walnut; there was no way it could scratch up the side of its paddock to trick the staff into thinking it had escaped.

Claire regretted not telling Owen what was in the Indominus most of all. Maybe if he had known sooner that the base DNA was velociraptor, they could have avoided a major loss of life. She hadn't expected his pack to choose a new alpha and turn on him. She equally hadn't expected Blue, his beta, to come back. She didn't know what in God's name possessed her to release the Tyrannosaurus, only that she had, and she led it herself to the fight, armed only with a road flare. She didn't know what possessed her to _throw_ said road flare right at the Indominus's head, but she had, and somehow instead of _both_ dinosaurs coming to kill her, they fought each other. She'd run back to Owen and her nephews, scared out of her mind, but unhurt.

Claire shoved past another "intrepid" reporter and hailed a cab. She wanted _out_. She hadn't asked for any of this, she was just pursuing a wild dream…dinosaurs, alive again in her time, and it had all gone to pot. And she had been at the very epicenter of it when it did. Claire climbed in her cab and passed the cabbie a fifty.

"Just drive, I don't know where I'm going yet. And fast, I want to get out of here." The cabbie sped off, leaving the media frenzy far behind her. Claire tossed her head back against the seat and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

When the first summons to court arrived in the mail, she knew her ordeal was far from over. It had hardly been a week after she'd been flown back to the States with other survivors from that wretched day that she'd gotten it. Her hands shook, and she'd called her sister. Karen had been more than generous and had let Claire _and_ Owen stay with her family until they found new places to live, and their severance pay had certainly helped matters. She had relied upon her sister for support when the first hearings came around; gradually, though, she noticed her sister was slowly pushing her into the arms of the behavioral researcher who had come home with her. Claire still called Karen, and once she got her apartment at least halfway furnished and organized she'd had the entire family over for dinner and games. But more and more she was finding her true comfort with Owen Grady. They sent text messages back and forth, which turned in to phone calls, which led to their second first date. Claire smiled to herself. He had been absolutely charming. He'd dressed up, _he'd shaved_ , and it had been up to her to order alcohol first. He'd been the perfect gentleman the entire night; a complete heel-face-turn from their disastrous first attempt, and after dinner…Claire's face heated. Owen Grady certainly had _talent_ where _that_ was concerned; she had to give him that. But there was so much more to him than that.

Owen didn't judge her based on what happened in the park. Claire was hard pressed to find someone who _didn't_ want to hang her in town square for what happened that day. Karen and her husband had been furious at first, but when Claire met her sister in that hanger with tears in her eyes, just glad to be alive, Karen had forgiven her in a blink. She had explained dozens of times that the fragments of DNA used to produce the Indominus were selected to allow the animal to better adapt to its environment on the tropical island, and that everything else was overlooked by the lab technicians. She had explained over and over that she had no involvement in the selection process, nor had she ordered or approved the new animal; Simon Masrani had commissioned it, himself, to increase park attendance and draw in new sponsors. She'd had to explain that the chief geneticist on the project, Dr. Wu, had escaped the island and that law enforcement was pursuing him. Vic Hoskins, who had led the disastrous effort to militarize Owen's velociraptors, died before her very eyes because he did not understand that being an alpha was not the same as having them trained.

Owen's velociraptors were another story entirely. As far as she was aware, only Blue had survived once the raptors chose the Indominus as their new alpha over Owen. Owen had _loved_ his velociraptors; they were _his pack_. They gave his life meaning, and they respected him as their alpha. There was one night she'd let herself get drunk with Owen at his apartment and she had cried for at least an hour over the pain and trouble she'd caused him. Owen had held her while she cried, and when she stopped sobbing long enough to listen, he gently explained that saving his life from the tyrannodactyl had meant more to him than the loyalty of a few velociraptors. She'd confessed then; how scared she had been, how unsure that her plan with the T-rex would work. How terrified of the Indominus she had been, and how it haunted her nightmares; the ghoulish image of the dying apatosaur followed her night and day.

And then there were the pictures. People sent her pictures of injuries their family members had sustained, through email and regular mail. Someone had leaked her private email accounts and her address, and the pictures came non-stop. Pictures of people who had lost limbs and later died of their injuries. The first one made Claire vomit for an hour, and she hadn't been able to eat anything for three days afterward. It wasn't until Owen closed out her email accounts and rerouted her mail to a post office box that the pictures stopped coming. He'd offered to bring her the mail so she wouldn't chance upon any more pictures, and she'd accepted.

Claire wasn't really sure she'd have been able to get through any of what the media had been throwing at her without Owen Grady. He was her rock, her source of strength. She reached for the pendant around her neck. It was just a little heart-shaped charm Owen had given her about a month ago. She wore it every day, once she'd finished chastising him for spending money on her. It made her feel like Owen was with her. It made her feel strong. All of this nonsense was really out of her control, and people just couldn't see that she'd been as hurt by it as the rest of them. Except Owen.

Owen was a part of the tragedy the same way that she was, only not publicly. Owen couldn't talk about any of his life's work without sideways glances and baser assumptions that he was as culpable of the incident as the public believed her to be. His greatest achievement, _becoming the alpha of a velociraptor pack_ , had to be swept under the rug and hidden because of what _she_ allowed to happen in that park. Claire could never forgive herself for the grief she caused Owen. She'd heard it said that couples shouldn't form out of a tragedy because that's all they had in common, and she was starting to believe it. Really, what did Han Solo and Leia have in common after the second Death Star was destroyed? Claire snorted and smiled. She had Owen to thank for that; in exchange for watching a few foreign films with her, he'd made her sit through the original Star Wars trilogy, which took explaining in and of itself before she would watch them. (Seriously, though, if they came out first why are they four, five, and six? It just didn't make sense to her.) She had to admit, Harrison Ford had a certain rogue charm, and she saw a lot of Owen in him. She saw a lot of herself in Princess Leia, minus the Hopi-inspired hair doughnuts, as her boyfriend was fond of calling them.

Claire liked to imagine that she and Owen had more in common than just this tragedy. They shared a love for really bad movies, Chinese takeout, and a healthy love for debate. Owen was an equal, intellectually competent and stimulating in every way. She didn't have to explain things to him the way she had to break things down for men before. He tried to understand her; he tried _so hard._ One night she'd picked out a particularly complicated docudrama, just to see what Owen would say, and he sat, arms crossed, face screwed tight through the whole thing. He asked questions when he got lost or confused, and there was the occasional comment from the peanut gallery, but he made it through and had actually enjoyed the film. Or so he said.

Claire felt like her head was swimming. After today she didn't have enough mental reserves left to be _this_ existential about her relationship with Owen; she just knew that she wanted him in her life. He could play a video game while she sat next to him on the couch, reading quietly, without a word spoken between them, and they were both perfectly content. He didn't expect her to entertain him or demand attention. Every now and again, he would remind her that he acknowledged life outside Halo or whatever and would sneak attack her to give her a kiss. All she felt like doing was going home and watching a movie with him…Claire looked out the window and saw that her cabbie had taken her to a part of town closer to Owen's apartment than her own and quietly typed out a text.

 _At your place? I had a really bad day. Wanna snuggle and watch a movie or three._ It was easier to snuggle and watch movies at Owen's apartment anyway; unlike her, he had a TV in his bedroom, something he constantly heckled her about getting in her own room.

Owen texted back fairly quickly; he was never too far from his phone. _Sure thing. Not there now but can be in a few minutes._ Claire gave her cabbie Owen's address and dialed her phone.

"Hullo?" Owen's voice sounded a little thick, like he'd been out drinking. A twinge ran up her spine. She knew Owen's womanizing ways and still didn't fully trust him to be alone in a bar.

"Hey. It's me."

"I kinda noticed. Caller ID and stuff." Claire giggled.

"I'm exhausted. Where are you?" She asked, fiddling with the edge of her skirt.

"Nowhere in particular, just one of my old haunts from way back. Here alone, I can hear you thinking it." Claire's shoulders sagged as she let out a breath, trying hard to conceal it from Owen.

"Oh, alright. Meet you back at your place?"

"Yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes." She could hear someone talking in the background and using his name.

"I'm…I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Claire bit her lip.

"Nope."

"By yourself?"

"Yeah, just having a drink or two." She heard him say something to someone else, and a male voice responded.

"You're not driving home, are you?"

"No, not driving. Don't have a car, 'member?" Duh, Claire. Owen's motorcycle was back on Isla Nublar. He was going to have to call a cab. She was pulling up in front of his apartment complex.

"Well, I beat you home so I'm going to let myself in. See you in a few?" Claire paid her cabbie and got out of the cab, hoping Owen had remembered to leave his spare key under the potted plant next to the front door.

"Okay. See you in a few." The next few words rose unbidden from her lips.

"I love you," she said before she could stop herself. It just felt natural. Despite their obvious differences, she really and truly loved Owen. He was exactly what she needed, when she needed it, in more ways than one. He had done everything she'd needed him to do _before_ she knew she needed it. She couldn't lose him, and yet she'd just gone and said something stupid like "I love you," entirely too early.

There was a long pause on Owen's end.

"I love you too."

Claire beamed as she headed up the sidewalk to Owen's apartment.

 _He loves me._


End file.
